Brussels, 31/10/2013 (Agence Europe) - On 30 October, the French representative to the Political and Security Committee (PSC), Philipp Setton, reiterated that the EU is not inactive in the Syrian crisis. “It's not fair to say that the EU is as inactive as the French are active”, he said in his speech entitled “France: too active for Europe?”, which he gave at the Ifri conference, “Syria - what now? State of affairs and future options”. “Right from the start, the EU has mobilised a number of the instruments it has,- negative measures with the suspension of programmes with Syria and negotiations on an association agreement, successive financial and economic sanctions, and on the movement of certain people”, he said, recalling the EU's action on the humanitarian field and its readiness to help with dismantling the chemical weapons. “The idea that we are taking out sanctions and acting on the humanitarian level only when we can't do anything else is a rather debateable and mistaken assessment”, Setton added, taking the example of the sanctions on Iran which have had an effect on how the situation has developed with the authorities as regards the nuclear issue.
Military or non-military intervention? In the view of Denis Bauchard, Ifri's special adviser for the Middle East, “be it for the EU or the US, there is an enormous divide between the indignant rhetoric, the denunciation of a barbaric regime and the reality of the aid - be it financial, humanitarian, for training or for the supply of arms”. “There is no appetite among the public for military intervention”, he added. In Bauchard's opinion, the most important issue is to find a political solution with the relaunch of the Geneva II peace conference. “We don't know whether there will be a Geneva II. Experience shows that in the Middle East any expectation of a scenario is doomed to failure”, he said.
In the view of Etienne De Durand, the director of Ifri's Security Studies Centre, the Syrian crisis shows the West's disunity. Faced with the use of chemical weapons and possible military intervention, there has been a “lack of agreement in Europe - the silence of Europe”. And now, “American and French credibility is being underminded. If we wanted to take action tomorrow it would be more difficult to show we were serious”, he said. In De Durand's opinion, the time for military intervention has “passed”. “There will perhaps be a new phase later but we must wait for the fighting to die down. Once the war-makers become tired, it is easier to intervene”, he added, quoting the example of Bosnia (our translation throughout). (CG/transl.fl)